


Don't Mind Singing

by alissabobissa



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-02
Updated: 2011-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:32:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alissabobissa/pseuds/alissabobissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days are dark and some are bright, some days they cry and some they smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Mind Singing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunar47](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunar47/gifts).



Day by day, taking each as they come, she measures her life. Instead of counting on Prim’s clothes to need a fix or Gale to need help carrying in their hunting haul or bottles piling up outside Haymitch’s door, Katniss counts on her days to be the same, one after the other.

When she starts to note the differences – some days are dark and some are bright, some days they cry and some they smile – and one day a walk through the town isn’t at all familiar, it dawns on her that even though she didn’t expect to be living these days at all, she should be doing something other than simply counting them.

By the first anniversary of the last Reaping, the one that seemed to take everything from her, her home is almost recognizable. Some of the buildings in District 12 are still there, only older and scarred, the patchwork standing out from the rest. Not really much different than she and Peeta. But the day is bright and clear, and though the piles of rubble still outnumber the standing structures, some of the houses are new. Some of the children are playing in the fields. And no one is scared of losing a child or a brother or sister to the Capitol.

She expects the sadness of cold memories on this day, but instead gets a bit of sunshine and Peeta’s steady hand in hers as he says, “Never again.”

Peeta drags Katniss and their book across to Haymitch’s that night. He is remarkably sober, and she doesn’t need to ask who made sure he would remember this day. Greasy Sae has dinner on the table, and they all eat together, happy for the company. When the food is gone and Sae’s granddaughter is leading Peeta around the room in a sort of dance, Katniss doesn’t know why, but she begins to sing. She sings songs of hope and joy and peace. Only once does she let tears fall, but it’s so unlike any tear she’s cried since she’s been home that she wants to laugh and never stop.

After Sae and the little one have gone home, the three of them sit around the book and look at the pages of the tributes. Haymitch silently slips out of the room some time later, and Katniss and Peeta find themselves alone with their memories.

“Will you sing the one about the blue sky again? The slow one?” Peeta asks, and he’s smiling and she can’t say no. He leads her to the middle of the room and lets her begin the song before she realizes too late that he intends to dance with her. Like so many other times, his eyes do the convincing and they are swaying, holding each other close as she softly sings about a sky so blue and so clear that surely clouds could never darken it.

The next year Haymitch is sober for a whole week surrounding the Reaping and has Greasy Sae make enough food to feed the few extra people Peeta’s invited to dinner. And if the next few years see his house fill with friends and food and music on that day, and the year after that the celebration move out into the rebuilt town square, only Katniss is surprised. If a new generation of children grows up never knowing a time when the Reaping was a day that meant fear and death instead of thanksgiving and hope, then Katniss can smile and be thankful she gets to see it at all.

When she starts counting the days of the lives of the little girl and the little boy that call her Mommy, she counts each one as near enough to a miracle, relying on Peeta to make the same toast each year at the Reaping.

Never again.


End file.
